Arena critical of Keane red card, CCL refereeing

CARSON, Calif. -- The LA Galaxy may have picked up a 5-2 victory over Isidro Metapan in their CONCACAF Champions League opener, but the story of the match was referee Alfredo Penaloza's decision to send off Galaxy forward Robbie Keane in the 70th minute of play.

Following the match, Galaxy head coach Bruce Arena was particularly vocal about the way that the match was officiated and his comments are below...

ARENA: "Making a transition into this circus sometimes is unbelievable. It's very difficult on MLS teams. I sometimes wonder why we spend all the resources and time we do in this competition when sometimes it looks really bizarre. But we've had enough time to be ready for this game. Maybe little bit of the layoff affected us. But there's no excuses on our part, it should be -- that game should be five or six goal margin playing with 11 players. Period.

(On Robbie Keane's red card...)

ARENA: "I don't know. The ref missed the call and typical, we've seen in these competitions, the referees think they're bigger than the game itself and they've got to put themselves ahead of everything, I guess he felt he should not be, I don't know. Robbie spoke, said something, whatever, but when a referee misses a call like that, he's got to be big enough to kind of ignore it and let the game go on. So a player gets a yellow card for diving when he's fouled and then obviously a red card for, I don't even know. They didn't explain anything to us."

(On Stephens' yellow...)

ARENA: "I've never seen a player like Mike Stephens come into a game and get a yellow card like that so that's a mystery in itself. Its something that's part of the CONCACAF experience and there's no excuses for it. At this time in this competition, after all these years, it's got to be better."